Friday, August 21, 2015

Our England Journey: London

You can't do a whirlwind tour of England without visiting London.

And indeed, on our first day, we whirlwind-ed it up. This was our main tourist day, and we walked down the river to Tower Bridge (which everyone knows as London Bridge, even though that's the name of another bridge), around the Tower of London (we didn't actually go in), up the river to Big Ben/Parliament and over to Buckingham Palace. It was a pretty exhausting day, though it was made better by the company of a dear friend who also let us crash at her place. Cheap home cooked meals for the win!

Slooowly getting closer.

Made it!

It turns out the part of the Tower of London that is shown in all the photos isn't the whole thing. The tall square part is surrounded by several layers of walls outside of that, and it's sort of hard to actually see the square part unless you pay to go in (or ride in a helicopter).

I liked this shot with Tower Bridge in the background of the Tower of London.

The second day was a museum day. Dan and I managed to see much of the British Museum as well as ALL of the National Gallery (I'm still proud of the ALL part, though my feet really hated me for it.)

I did take photos in the British Museum, but you all probably know what the Elgin Marbles and the Rosetta Stone look like (or how to use Google), so I'll skip those and just share these two paintings that I adored in the National Gallery.

Portrait of a Lady by Alesso Baldovinetti (1465)
Her dress (or at least the sleeve embroidery)
may now be on my wish list.

Saint Peter Martyr by Carlo Crivelli (1476)
He was, of course, murdered by both a sword and a
cleaver.

I don't seem to have any photos of our third day. We spent the morning attending mass at St. Paul's (an excellent way to get in free to churches) and the afternoon visiting the Museum of London. This was a recommended museum from two different colleagues of mine, both saying it was their favorite London museum, and it didn't disappoint. Much less crowded than any of the others, it was a really well done history museum--and it was free (though so are most major London Museums).

After our three days tramping around London, it was on to Bath, because how could I not?